


Required Element

by plan3t



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ice Skating, M/M, McHanzo Week, McHanzo Week 2017, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 00:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11242269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plan3t/pseuds/plan3t
Summary: Required Element: A skating element that must be included in a competitor's program.In the early spring, Jesse McCree has more than plenty on his plate. A bit of school, a shit job washing dishes, stupid shit his friends make him do, he gets a lot of sweet talk done, but it doesn't quite get him completely out of trouble.





	Required Element

**Author's Note:**

> Putting this up for McHanzo week 2017 finally!! This has been a labor of love that I've been working on for a very.... very long time (Since august really). I'm hoping I can continue to write it! (It's currently about 11500+ words) I plan on this just being a slice of life where two people become friends and eventually lovers;; the formatting turned to garbage when I pulled this from google docs so I'm gonna apologize for that

 

**Blow A Tire:** _When a skater falls onto the ice for no apparent reason other than losing their footing._

 

    In the early spring, Jesse McCree has more than plenty on his plate. The sun stays out a little longer, which is good, his instructor at the tech school talks about seasonal tire changeovers, which would make sense if they lived someplace where the snow stuck around at all and posed a big enough hazard to require studded tires. It never did, but he supposes fine enough to learn how it works. Jesse likes tech school well enough, just as he likes tinkering, solving problems, and getting his hands a little dirty. Spring also meant he didn’t have to wear his ratty winter coat if he didn’t want to. Spring also meant he didn’t have to do the extra dumb shit that he does in the winter to cover the cost of heating his good-for-nothing apartment.

    Now, what exactly constitutes “dumb shit” is a whole other can of worms. But granted, the worms, at the root of it, were the bulk of what made his plate plenty to begin with. Jesse had shit friends, always had shit friends, always flocked with the wrong people; they were people that stole shit, people that hurt people on an off day, general ruffians— and Jesse could say wholeheartedly that he couldn’t stand most of them. Though he could’ve been far worse for wear, and the best his mama-bless her heart-could’ve hoped for him was school, even if tech school wasn’t much to brag about. And granted, Jesse was never up front for the dumb shit he was a part of, just sweet talking to folks whose eyes might pry, covering his partners’ skeevy asses, and all around keeping them from walking into the slammer and locking the door behind themselves.

    Either way, Jesse _hates_ the dumb shit.

    At 21 goddamn years old, there’s nothing he hates more than playing a cool and charismatic, _hey sweetheart_ type, while some dumbass friend-of-a-friend frantically shoves electronics into one the three coats he’s wearing, or some dumbass friend-of-a-friend carefully cuts a circle around an inkwell tag on a 500-some-odd dollar jacket, or some dumbass friend-of-a-friend gives a hand signal to some _other_ dumbass friend-of-a-friend that says _walk calm, cool, collected out the front door, and let Jesse take care of the rest_.

    These friends like to call themselves Deadlock, a cool and edgy name to glaze over the fact that what they do is, in fact, one of the least fun and cool things Jesse has ever done on the planet. He’s known a good few of them since middle school, back when smoking a stolen cigarette between the four of them and pocketing cool shit from the from the store around the corner was immensely more entertaining than sitting at home and doing homework.

_Filthy habit_ , Jesse thinks, tapping ash off the end his cigarillo as he leans up against the bare brick wall behind the restaurant where some portion of his income comes from. The family of one of the other Deadlock kids owns the place, and a lot of the folks in their crowd work little jobs under the table -- Jesse had the utmost privilege of washing the dishes. He fucking hates it. It’s a shit job for shit pay. And all his clothes smell like old spaghetti sauce.

    “Jesseee!” trills a voice from around the nearby dumpster. A thin, scraggly looking fellow pops in on Jesse’s smoke break, his grin wide as the favor he’s about to ask pushing against his teeth, “Just the guy I wanted to see.”

    “Hey Chuck,” Jesse greets a bit apprehensively and breathes out a slow plume of smoke, diverting his attention to the glowing ember on the end of his cigarillo, hoping that if he can avoid eye contact with the acquaintance that there was a chance he’d go away.

    “We were thinkin’ about going to the mall this afternoon,” Chuck pushes forward with an unnecessary and cartoonish wink. Jesse forces an uncomfortable smile over his face. “We were prob’ly gonna smoke a joint in Nate’s car and then try to pop in and see what’s what.”

    “Man, I don’t know if I can-” Jesse fruitlessly attempts, but as always, he looks up and makes a moment’s worth of eye contact with Chuck, who jumps when he notices that hesitation.

    “C’mon, man, Jesse, ya can’t go into this shit without a sweet face like yours, you know that,” Chuck snickers at the term, and Jesse purses his lips in disdain. It’s the barest bones of a compliment, maybe, but it’s far from anything that could convince Jesse into agreeing. “Dylan’s just got some bills due this week,” Chuck admits, stomping at an old cigarette butt on the ground, “we’re trying to scrounge for him, you know how it is.” The pinch in Jesse’s face sloughs off sympathetically.

    “Well shit chuck-- you know I can’t keep doing this--” Jesse stammers, then sighs in defeat. Dylan’s got a baby on the way. Chuck knowingly pats Jesse’s shoulder, and that shit-eating grin spreads over his face again.

    “Alright, we’ll come getcha in an hour, yeah?”

    “Yeah,” Jesse complies, and he snuffs out his smoke under his shoe.

 

    “C’mon,” Jesse groans irritatedly, kicking at his Chuck’s shoe as he fiddles with a hair pin and a multitool on an old, near worthless lock, “This is stupid, you know that, yeah? Do you realize how dumb this is?”

    “Shut the hell up, McCree,” Nate hisses from next to him, giving Jesse a stiff elbow in the ribs, “You know how much money kids fork over into these stupid things? ‘Nough quarters to cover your laundry through Christmas, I’d say.”

    “Yeah, kids,” Jesse points out, jabbing a pointed thumb over his shoulder to a cluster of children, probably not even quite 10, giggling as they wildly jolt a steering wheel on a racing game, “ _Kids_.” Jesse’s on the receiving end of an elbow a second time, and he grunts in pain, wrinkling his nose and gently placing his hand over an eventual bruise. “Whatcha gonna do when one of them brats comes over and asks for tickets?”

    “What do you think we brought _you_ here for?” the lockpick says, and Jesse feels the roll of Chuck’s eyes in place of what would be a well-placed _‘duh’_.

    “Oh I don’t know,” Jesse remarks sarcastically, “When you said ‘mall’ I kind of assumed Macy’s or somethin’, not a goddamn heist of the century on a fucking Skee Ball machine. Do kids even play Skee Ball anymore? None ‘a that’s gonna help Dylan at all. ’S probably empty, I’d reckon.”

    Like clockwork, the lock clicks, and the door on the godforsaken machine clatters open.

    “Fuck yes,” Jesse’s friends whisper together, grinning like wolves as they scramble to reach in, butting at each other cartoonishly as they grasp for quarters and scarce print money to shove in their pockets.

    “Oh Jesus, come on, can you be a little more obvious? Like just a little, Christ,” Jesse swears, peering over his shoulder just in time to meet eyes with the children on the racing game, looking absolutely appalled before one of them, his fingers tight around the wheel shouts at the loudest his little prepubescent lungs can muster.

    “They’re _stealing_!” he squeals, to which both of Jesse’s partners freeze, their eyes wide, before they kick it in gear and scramble, quarters scattering out of their pockets as they gain footing and hightail it the hell out.

    “Ah, Jesus fucking-- are you serious?!” Jesse hollers, grasping for his own share of coins and shoving them in his jacket pockets, hurrying with clumsy, nervous fingers to try to put the machine back in its original working order before he feels strong, adult-sized footsteps approaching behind him through the arcade floor. He freezes, stock still, a rabbit caught in a vegetable garden, and makes the first movement for a dead sprint toward the exit, only to be quickly snatched by his jacket at the scruff of his neck. Any further attempts to make a break for it prove fruitless, and thus, Jesse deems his captor is _definitely_ strong. _Definitely_ adult-sized.

    “‘Scuse me,” Jesse croaks out, squirming and trying to smoothly wiggle out of his jacket through the bottom in hopes of last minute escape, which proves extremely ineffective and only succeeds in gaining something like an amused chuckle from the someone that currently has him by a handful of it. Jesse peers back.

    The guy is _someone_ alright, 30-something, cropped and coily black hair, dark eyes, a goatee that oddly suits him, dark skin, and a shirt that hugs around _very_ nice biceps. In that moment, Jesse decides that his captor is unbelievably handsome, so much that Jesse kind of has to take a moment and a half to recuperate, floundering.

    “Howdy,” Jesse manages, smirking and nodding his head in lieu of a tip of his hat, far from the usual smoothness and charm that his _hey sweethearts_ typically have, and he laughs a bit nervously, “Sorry, machine fell open, uh, sir. Can I call you sir?” The stranger snorts and smirks, amused, making Jesse’s heart flutter just a little, and directly avoids the latter question.

    “Is that right? And the multitool?” the stranger raises his brows inquisitively, nudging the tool in question with his foot.

    “Was tryin’ to put it back together, sir. Kids caught me at the wrong time, thought I was up to no good I guess, heh. Good kids.”

    “Yeah?” the stranger presses again, his smirk curling a little further up in wicked amusement, before pointedly giving Jesse’s entirety a shake so that quarters jingled in his pockets, some falling onto the carpet at their feet. “What about all that?”

    “’S an arcade, sir? How else am I supposed to-” Jesse attempts, his stomach swooped with anxiety.

    “Do you know when to quit?” the stranger interjects, brows raised and amusement gone. Jesse cracks a mischievous grin and gives the Skee Ball machine one last kick before it clatters open again, the roll of tickets inside jostling off its perch and rolling, unfurling across the floor.

    “No sir.”

 

    Jesse wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting when he was dragged to the manager’s office somewhere in the back rooms of the complex, but he certainly wasn’t expecting to be plopped down in a cold metal chair, confronted with the stern, frustrated gaze of whom he could only assume was running this whole operation. She has long, dark hair, faint streaks of grey barely noticeable in the vastness of it; and when she lifts her gaze from the monitor of her computer, Jesse can tell, even from across the desk, that her eyes have a slight differentiation in them, one lighter than the other. The darker one is accessorized by a simple tattoo descending onto her cheekbone, an eye of Horus, or something. She’s beautiful, undoubtedly, but the way she squints between Jesse and his captor gives him a nagging feeling in his gut that he may very well die in this back room over a few handfuls of quarters.

    “Alright, Gabriel,” she starts, somewhat confrontational, dropping the pen she had formerly been using to scribble on scrap paper so that it rolled waywardly over the desktop, “Who’s the kid?”

    “Cracked open a Skee Ball machine,” answers the handsome stranger, whose name, apparently, is Gabriel, “Took twice as long for us to get here than it should’ve with all the quarters weighing him down.” Jesse snorts, to which Gabriel responds with a flick to his ear. “That, and I’m pretty sure he broke the damned thing. Couldn’t get it to light back up at all.” Gabe sniffs at the air. “Smells awful, too.”

    “Thank you, sir,” Jesse sasses, and he can _feel_ Gabriel’s mouth open for a comeback.

    “As much as I appreciate the security, Gabriel,” the woman stops him before he could speak, “I’d prefer if you kept the manhandling to a minimum in the future. Can you do that for me?” She raises her brows and offers a tight-lipped smile, an expression that says they’ll absolutely be speaking about this later, and Gabriel leaves the office with little more than a grumble under his breath. The room is left uncomfortably quiet, a pregnant pause, the only real noise being the low hum of the air conditioner.

    “So,” the woman finally says, her tone almost piercing, as she flicks her gaze appraisingly over Jesse; and Jesse, sitting before her as a grown-ass man, feels his stomach drop again. This feels like high school. He feels like he’s being scolded. “Did you steal from us?” she questions smoothly, picking her pen back up and rolling it in her fingers.

    “I mean,” Jesse answers, “I’m still sittin’ here, so the money’s not left the building yet.”

    “You’re not in the position to get smart,” the woman snips, “I have seen you and your hooligan friends around the mall before, I know what you do. Do you usually steal or only when you’re high?” Jesse winces. “I’d like one reason not to hand you over to proper authorities.”

    “Uh, if I may, ma’am,” Jesse responds, politely reaching into one of his pockets to pull out a handful of change and deposit it onto the manager’s desk, “For one, I can’t imagine I have much more than 20 bucks, here. The, uh, hooligans got most of it. They ran off before I had the chance to. For the record, I thought this was a stupid idea to begin with.” Another pocket full of change ends up on the desk, next to the first. “Thought they brought me along for somethin’ more important. ‘Course not. For two, I could fix what it was they broke. Pretty good with my hands, could probably leave that thing better than it was when we found it.”

    The manager arches a single brow, intrigued. “Interesting,” she replies folding her arms as she leaned back in her chair, “We will see.”

 

    It’s odd, really, that out of all the dumb shit that happens, Jesse gets an honest-to-goodness job out of it. It starts out with just tinkering with the first arcade machine, which lasts about an afternoon, then moves to leveling the scoreboard over the rink and screwing the bolts of the bleachers tight for a day or so for free lunch and 40 bucks, which he politely declined before slipping into his wallet, _thank ya kindly, ma’am_ . The manager of this whole entertainment complex (which’s got the arcade, laser tag, and the only god damn ice rink in town, apparently) goes by Ana, or Ms. Ana, as Jesse politely calls her. Somehow, after every niggling doubt she should have had after catching him high with a couple pockets full of her quarters, she offers him a position. She says he’s a decent enough handyman, and more charismatic and child-friendly than Torbjörn, who drives the zamboni and only _kind of_ fixes the machines. Jesse, who has staunchly decided that he is newly kind of out of a job, and out of friends, and still kind of needs to make ends meet somehow, accepts it gratefully,  and says he’ll start ASAP.

    The job is a lot more than fixing things, it turns out, but it’s alright. He sharpens skates, hands them out to kids, mans the ticket prize counter, or whatever else Ms. Ana says he should do today. She’s a fine enough boss, firm but motherly, and compared to sweet talking folks into looking away from dumb shit, Jesse can say it’s a solid improvement. Could even say he _enjoys_ it.

    Today, he’s a couple months into it, manning the rink area, just watching, making sure no one gets hurt. It’s mostly barren, it being a school day and their main clientele being, well, school-aged. There’s still one fellow though, a fellow he’s certain comes in commonly enough to call him a regular. He always brings his own skates, always says little in response to Jesse’s _how’re you doin' today?_ ’s and _Howdy stranger_ ’s, merely slips the rink membership card across the counter, nods in acknowledgement, and skates.

    And he _skates_.

    Like he was born on ice. Some kind of figure skater, no doubt— fit and graceful, with long dark hair and strong legs that just glide across the ice, and when the fella is damn near the only other person there, it’s hard for Jesse to peel his eyes off. He’s _gorgeous_.

    Today, when the ‘fella’ comes in and slides his cards across the counter, Jesse looks at him, lips spread in his friendliest grin.

    “Howdy.”

    Unsurprisingly, Hanzo barely looks up from his membership card sitting on the counter. There’s only a soft hum in response to a rather award-winning smile. He had noted the personnel change from the moment it happened, months ago, having been a regular here for the two years he had been attending the university 40 minutes out. The man across the counter couldn’t have been any older than himself, and was thankfully a little easier on the eyes than the dwarfish looking fellow who usually worked the weekday shifts. But he was here to skate; even in a gaudy entertainment complex like this, he could find peace around midday. And he desperately needed some peace. Finals were coming up very soon, his roommates were just as much of a hassle they had been all semester, and the library had been so packed with students he had taken this one day off he had this week to skate. Luckily it was an off season, but any time he had missed even a single practice he scheduled with himself it would show when competitions came back into swing.

    He pushes past the doors into the rink and sits on the benches to put his skates on, and breathes in the cold, crisp air. With a glance out over the ice, smooth and pristine, Hanzo could tell that the ice hadn’t been touched yet today. _Perfect,_ a wide ambitious grin stretches across his face as he pulls his hair into a tight bun and sits himself on the floor. Usually, Hanzo would stretch back in his dorm before coming to the complex, but his roommates had made their disdain for his penchant for fitness pretty obvious. He pops his headphones into his ears and thumbs around his music files, picking a new mix his brother had made for him a few days earlier. He breathes in slowly and reaches towards his feet, nearly resting his forehead on the damp smelling carpet as he felt his muscles gradually grow more and more taut. Hanzo angles his hips forward, moving into a split position, sitting up and keeping his back straight, pulling his arms across his chest and over his head.

    Now Jesse does his best not to snoop, but he _definitely_ saw that guy go into the rink, and now he is nowhere in sight. Cautiously, he toes open the doors and peeks inside, only to find the only customer in the entire complex, in what looks like a split with his head low, body impressively contorted, enough to make Jesse’s cheeks grow hot.

    “Oho, well uh,” Jesse chuckles awkwardly, and scratches the back of his head, rather embarrassed he had jumped the gun and poked in when his only customer so far today was not even in any distress. _When his only customer so far today was_ , “Not even listening to me at all.” He crosses his arms, leaning up against the high glass walls of the rink.

    It takes a moment or so for the man on the floor to take notice of Jesse’s hovering, and when he does, there’s a noticeable flinch in surprise. Hanzo pulls out a headphone, scowls, audibly blows air out of his nose as he gives Jesse a once over. Jesse McCree, being Jesse McCree, pays it no mind. He’d never quite been the best at reading nonverbals.

    “I didn’t see you all the way down there from out in the booth so I assumed you might’ve fallen or something,” he speaks slowly, the slight twang in his voice a little exaggerated by his smile as he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “You come here a lot though, huh? Look like you’ve been skating for a while, too. How long’d it take ya ‘ta learn the splits?” Jesse’s line of questioning is awkward, at best, his train of thought swerving when he thinks of a marginally relevant question to tack on. “I work here when I’m not in my tech courses-- can you get out of the splits on yer own?” He pointed towards Hanzo’s legs.

    “I’m... fine?” Even to Hanzo, it sounds more like a question than a statement. He didn’t really know what to say; it had been a while since anyone spoke with him intending to actually try and hold a conversation, although this could hardly have been called much of one. The line of questions mixed with the touch of embarrassment the two of them were stewing in made his mind fuzzy.

    “Ah, right, yeah, sorry. You probably wanna skate, huh?” Jesse apologizes, rubbing the bit of hair he had on his chin, the slight bite to the air of the rink making his cheeks grow pinker. “I’ll let ya’ get back to it.” He drops his hands to his sides after a moment, making the motions to leave, but he turns right back towards Hanzo, taking a step or two closer. “Ya’ know, yer in here pretty damn often, pardon my French, I don’t really know what quite for. Practicin’ for somethin’? You got a name even?”

    “Mm.” Hanzo swallows, picking himself off the floor.

    “Was that a ‘yes’? For like… which?” Jesse scratches at his chin again, pretty obviously confused. Slowly, the shorter man slips on his skates, making sure to take care in lacing them up, one after the other, feeling eyes on him the entire time, waiting for a proper answer. Hanzo stands, taking careful steps towards Jesse, and at nearly the same height, locks eyes with him and raises his eyebrows a little. After a moment, Hanzo’s purses his lips and crosses his arms expectantly, leaving Jesse flushed. “Ah, I’ll uh, get outta your way then.” He swallows, rubbing the back of his head and taking a half-step to the side to let Hanzo through.

    Hanzo blows air through his nose, _what a fool_ , he thinks, leaving his gym bag and workout regimen on a crumpled piece of paper behind on the bench. He pops his headphones back in and takes to the ice feeling stress immediately melt from where he kept it held in his shoulders. Like releasing a deep, cleansing breath, tension eased from his body as he slid over the ice, making circles around the perimeter. Stretching usually helped, but there wasn’t much that compared actually feeling the sharp metal of his skates slice across the surface of the rink. He loved the entire experience of skating, ever since he was a child; the bite to the air, the smell of the ice, the feeling of total control and calm that came with the speed he wouldn’t ever try to achieve if there had been other people out with him.

    Jesse, as per usual, took to passively watching the only customer, gathering speed over the ice, whirling, spinning, with grace and precision that Jesse himself doubted he could accomplish in just about anything. The man’s hair tie whips along behind him, catching on the air, streaming along behind him amidst jumps and turns. It’s mesmerizing, truly, and Jesse can’t quite peel his eyes away. He tries to go back into the main room of the complex, give him some peace and quiet.

    Curiosity gets the best of him, and he checks over his shoulder like he could get caught and sneaks over to the front where there’s a sign in sheet. Regulars usually don’t bother much with it but Jesse’s seen him write his name carefully every time. Right there in blue ink was _Hanzo Shimada Tuesday, April 25_. A burst of giddiness explodes in his chest. “Hanzo,” he says aloud “Well I’ll be damne-”

    “Watch your language.” Ana’s biting voice came from the doors, causing Jesse to nearly jump right out of his skin.

    “ _Jesus_ , Ms. Ana, y’ scared me so bad I just about jumped over to sunday.” he clutches his chest, breathing heavily and leans on the guestbook. His drawl always more prominent when he’s emotional, Ana can’t help but blow a laugh from her nose.

    “Just keeping you on your toes McCree.” she flips her braided hair over her shoulder. “I’m just in to check on some things, you can go back to…” she trails off, tilting her chin towards Jesse not-so-subtly trying to hide the book. “Whatever mischief is distracting you from your _job_.”

    Jesse lets out the air he’d been holding in his chest the second Ana leaves earshot. He wasn’t doing anything wrong really, but it damn sure felt like it. He goes to grab a broom for an excuse to hang around closer to the ice.

    For Hanzo, though, there isn’t a whole lot to think about while he skates. It was almost as if his mind fell blank, falling into a rhythm as he eased over the ice. Every so often he would let himself close his eyes in a jump, trusting himself to catch his fall. Sure, it was a touch dangerous, but he had been within these walls and through this same biting air so many times before that he could see it in his mind. He begins to fall into his usual rhythm, a sweep around the rink or two, a jump across the center, just warming up his long-tired muscles. As he exhales deeply and slowly opens his eyes, he locks gazes with the counter boy who’s just on the other side of the glass.

    And Jesse feels like he’s been caught in the act; he hadn’t been given permission to watch and all of a sudden it feels like he’s just walked in on something he _really_ wasn’t supposed to. His gaze meets Hanzo’s, and the moment seems to freeze for some immeasurable span of time, the both of them acknowledging each other for _one, two_ \--

    Until Jesse recognizes the wall, and how Hanzo is approaching it, and _how fast_ he’s approaching it.

    “Look out!” Jesse hollers, dropping the broom, voice echoing from across the rink.

    But the call falls on deaf ears, seemingly, as Hanzo is captivated differently-- focused on deep brown eyes watching him, a wide set nose between with red-brown hair hanging around his ears and in his face. His mouth open, framed by stubble. It was almost strange how little he noticed up close as opposed to now, but then again he hadn’t been wearing his glasses. He’s saying something. _What?_

    The world goes hot and dark as Hanzo smacks into the wall, slamming his face directly onto the clear plexiglass and his legs give out underneath him. Laid out on the ice, he rips his headphones from his ears before the blood began to rush from his nose.

    “Fuck!” he hisses, pushing himself to a sitting position.

    “What was that? Ya’ all right?” As Hanzo’s trying to regain his awareness, a voice sweeter than honey meets his ringing ears. He dizzily turns his head towards the other man, who stumbles, slips across the ice in his shoes with a concerned sort of smile. Hanzo’s mouth hangs open, speechless and dazed as he tries to get to get his wits back about him.

    “Ya doin’ alright th--ah, shit,” Jesse swears, eyes going a bit wide at the sight of deep red smeared over Hanzo’s nose and dripping toward his mouth, “Christ, your nose is all bloody, sweetheart.” Hanzo squints up at him, seemingly confused, but mainly on the account that everything else he heard from Jesse just runs together, black eating at the edges of his vision.

    “It-It’s Hanzo right?” Jesse asks, lowering himself to his knees on the ice, “My name’s Jesse.” he points to his name tag and reaches slowly for his shoulder, trying to gain at least something like a proper response, lest he had to call an ambulance. “Let’s get you all cleaned up, alright?” His smile was genuine, and those deep dark eyes try to keep contact with Hanzo’s, trying to keep his gaze straight. Hanzo stiffens.

    And like a fool, Hanzo urges himself up, pushing Jesse from him, effectively causing Jesse to slip onto ass on the ice as Hanzo makes an attempt to make his way back out of the rink. He manages about a yard or so before his knees begin to wiggle underneath him and he nearly falls once again, a splash of blood falling from his face to the ice at his feet. The scrambling from behind continues as Jesse manages to gain his footing again, starting after Hanzo with a _Hey!_

    But Hanzo keeps moving, determined and stubborn. His skates hit the carpet and he falls just once more, face first, arms up near his head, legs spread out on the floor.

    “Kill me,” he groans in Japanese, with a mouthful of wet carpet. Jesse puts his hands on his hips, looking over Hanzo, bloodied and a touch delirious, and apparently unable accept help when he truly needs it. He squats back down, next to the man prostrate on the floor.

    “Alright, well, buddy, I’m gonna pick ya up, jus’ lettin’ ya know,” Jesse warns with a sigh, hooking his arms underneath the near-stranger’s armpits and hoisting him onto a bench. “Now listen,” he hangs a finger in front of Hanzo’s face, “You sit ya’self right where I’ve put ya.” His  scowl lets up with little more than a second and a half of the regular looking up like a damned kicked puppy, and he pulls a handkerchief out from his back pocket. “Wipe your face off, and I’ll be right back, okay?”

    The sharp sting of embarrassment and a busted nose hits Hanzo the second Jesse turns around and jogs out through the doors into the lobby. Oh god, he really, _really_ did that. Ran face first into the wall. He looks at his headphones hanging out of his pocket, still blasting whatever nonsense playlist his brother had sent him the night before. He looks over at the wall he ran into, a smear of blood stuck on the glass. He buries his face in his hands and immediately regrets it, pulling back with a sharp inhale. What an absolute fool he had made of himself, in a place he frequented, and planned to frequent, _had to_ frequent in the future. There was no getting out of coming back here to practice, so thank _God_ it was just the two of them that bore witness to this. He’d like to say he wouldn’t know what he would do if there was anyone else, but truthfully, he didn’t even know what to do _now_.

    “Hey there.” Hanzo blinks out of his daze as Jesse waves his hand through the space Hanzo had been staring off into. “I’ve got some stuff ‘ta fix ya up.” He holds a small first aid kit, wiggling it a bit, then throwing a leg over the bench and straddling it in front of Hanzo. Jesse waits a second before unpacking things, grabbing some peroxide and dipping it on to some gauze, holding it near his face before Hanzo nodded, allowing him to proceed.

    He doesn’t realize how _warm_ Jesse is until a few moments after he touches the gauze to his face, Jesse’s other hand holding his chin, wiping the blood from his mouth and nose, focusing on the task before him.

    For Jesse, well, he feels a little odd, wiping up this stranger who he’s barely even exchanged more than a few words with. He gently swabs at the blood around the man’s lips, eyes only periodically flicking up to Hanzo’s.

    Hanzo stares blankly into the concentrated face before him, watching his eyebrows pull together, tongue run across his lips. Instantly, he regrets the two and a half months he had pointedly ignored looking directly at him. He has gorgeous curling eyelashes, and strong, maybe even a little messy, overgrown eyebrows right above deep-set brown eyes. He has freckles scattered on his cheeks and nose, faint, sparse, hardly noticeable on his brown skin, and a bit of a dimple in the center of his chin as well. His arms and stomach are straining a bit at the sleeves and bottom of his polo, the shirt probably a half size too small.

    “Like I said, I’m Jesse. Jesse McCree.” he says, tossing the bloodied cloth on the little plastic box. “It looks like you’re done bleedin’ but you did get awful knocked around there, you alright?” He pushes his hair out of his face with the hand that doesn’t have a latex glove on it.

    They sit there in silence for a beat, Jesse’s smile growing awkward.

    “Alright well ah, you probably want a little water, Lemmie jus’-,” he trails off, swinging his leg between them, big boots falling heavy onto the floor as he stands, moving off quickly again to the water cooler in the corner back by the doors again. Hanzo reaches down and takes off his skates, pulling them off his feet in time to look up at Jesse bent over, trying to figure out the handles for the water.

    Oh, he is very handsome. Eyes like that could make his heart fall deeper into the pit of his stomach than the overwhelming embarrassment of falling on his face--twice. Hanzo straightened up, really running this over in his head. Pulling his hair from the disheveled bun, he shakes his head lightly and locks eyes with Jesse when he returns with the little paper cup.

    “Sorry I uh, I spilled a little on myself.” He sits down patiently, handing the cup over. “You not much for talkin’, are ya?” he raises a brow as Hanzo takes a sip with a hum similar to his greeting about an hour before.

    He opens his mouth and closes it again like a fish, trying to cover it by sipping the last of the wet paper in his hands. Hanzo hadn’t the slightest idea as to what to say. What came first? An apology? Gratitude? His mouth went dry when he looked Jesse over again. Big gaudy cowboy boots, hat hair undoubtedly from the hat he wore whenever he was off shift, he even had a cactus and horse sticker on his nametag.

    “Hey, you doin’ okay?” Jesse rests his hand on Hanzo’s knee lightly, shaking it a little. And the response he garners is not what he expects at all.

    In a last minute burst of panic, Hanzo lets “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English.” fall from his lips. Eyes growing wide like a deer in headlights he lets himself commit to his lie and follows it up with ‘I’m sorry I have to leave right now’ in Japanese. He made his decision, or moreso, he let his anxious nature win over any other intention he had ever had as usual. He quickly picks up his skates and shuffles away rigidly, grabbing his bag and kicking on his shoes, bending the heels of them under his feet for the first time for a quick escape. Walking a little faster now, and pushing through the double doors he waves a shaky “Thank you, bye!” at a rather… stunned looking rink attendant. In his break for the exit, Hanzo shoves his hand in his pocket for his phone, flicking open a text to his brother. He’d hear no end of this, undoubtedly, but he itched to admit at least some of what just happened. He couldn’t do it.

    After hurrying out to his car, Hanzo finishes his mostly-caps text to Genji and immediately deletes it, throwing his gym bag into the passenger seat. He makes a beeline back to campus housing, and realizes with a brief wince that, amid the chaos, he forgot his hair tie and ribbon.

    It’s the middle of spring, nearly the end of the semester of his sophomore year in college, and Hanzo Shimada knows he could never possibly return. It is a mixture of pride and foolishness, but he had been such an embarrassment he couldn’t possibly-- he could not _fathom_ practicing there ever again.

    Jesse, on the other hand, was left in the dust, baffled in urgency at which Hanzo had scurried out of building. It was understandable that the poor guy might’ve been embarrassed, but it felt a bit… abrupt. Not that there was much else to talk about, anyway, considering the apparent language barrier that… cleared a lot of things up, really, now that he knew. He gathers up the first aid kit back into the box and cleans up, throwing out the gauze and glove he’d used and finding an abandoned hair tie near the bench, a long ribbon he recalled fluttering behind Hanzo through his practices. Jesse ties it around his wrist for safe keeping. Surely, he’d come around again, he always did, and Jesse would be happy to return it when he came back around.


End file.
